For the final show on the 1982 Combat Rock American tour the Clash overshot the runway and crash-landed in Jamaica, wielding spliffs and guitars. According to the Black Market Clash website, the band was appearing at the first Jamaican World Music Festival and everyone was in “high” spirits:
“Each night the music didn't start until 7:00 p.m. 6-7 bands each night. So the last band wouldn't come on until 5 a.m., or so, at the earliest. At the time the "Bob Marley Memorial Performing Arts Centre" was no more than a very large rectangular piece of gravel covered ground with a big stage at one end. People were selling little bamboo mats you could sit/rest/sleep on. They were very popular. People would sleep through the bands they didn't want to see while waiting for someone else to come on. The sun was just starting to come up when the Clash finished their set….”
Not only does this boast an impressively diverse setlist that sprinkles plenty of reggae and dub into the mix, it’s a soundboard recording with loads of presence and depth – true stereo, with lots of speaker-to-speaker action. The show has been booted extensively in the past, most recently on CD as From London To Jamaica and Jamaican Affair. However, the former was flawed due to it not including the final song, “I Fought The Law,” and the latter suffers from somewhat flat sound; undoubtedly the Kombat label (also responsible for some recent White Stripes discs) performed some software remastering, as an A-B comparison of this and the other two clearly reveals Kingston Advice to be the definitive release of the show, sonically speaking. And of course it includes the complete “I Fought The Law,” too -- stick around for the announcer's comments at the very end, as they are pretty funny.
The packaging ups the collector ante: slick stock digipak which, granted, leaves a bit to be desired on the front sleeve, but on the inside presents a colorful collage of Clash posters, magazine covers and the like. The CD itself is a unique picture disc featuring a kind of negative-image design of the band plus song titles.
Very eye-catching indeed, and a must-own Clash artifact. -- OSWALD
